Dave Edmunds in a 1982 Columbia Records publicity photo (Lynn Goldsmith)
One of the unsung greats – Dave Edmunds – will be making an increasingly rare concert appearance later this summer when he performs at the Great British R&B Festival on August 26. The Welsh singer and guitarist, now 72, revealed the news on his Facebook page, which appears to be his only social media touchpoint as he doesn’t have a website. A quick glance at his concert history on his Setlist.fm page shows four performances in 2015, three in 2014, five in 2013 and no others since 2009. The vast majority of those appearances were in Sweden.
Edmunds’ music is often based on 1950s rockabilly style. He famously teamed with Nick Lowe to form Rockpile in 1976 with Billy Bremner and Terry Williams. Though they only have one official album – 1980’s Seconds of Pleasure – in fact, they four released many recordings together. Edmunds was signed to the U.S. on Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song label via Atlantic in the U.S. Lowe was signed to Columbia.
Edmunds’ 1978 album Tracks on Wax 4 – which featured such songs as “Trouble Boys” and “Deborah” – and Lowe’s 1979 Labour of Lust with the pop hit “Cruel To Be Kind,” were essentially Rockpile albums though credited to the two as solo artists.
Edmunds first made an impact in 1970 with the #1 U.K. (and #4 U.S.) hit “I Hear You Knocking.” He later earned modest Top 40 success with “Slipping Away,” the John Fogerty composition “Almost Saturday Night” and Elvis Costello’s “Girls Talk.”
Edmunds’ last U.S. dates were a handful of shows in 2002 and 2003. Best Classic Bands‘ Founder Greg Brodsky saw his May 2002 concert at the now-shuttered Bottom Line Cabaret in New York’s Greenwich Village when it was just Edmunds and his guitar in an intimate setting on a cross-section of material including the standards “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “That’s All Right,” his cover of Graham Parker’s “Crawling From the Wreckage,” and Lowe/Rockpile’s “I Knew the Bride.”
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Edmunds released an instrumental album, Rags & Classics in 2015 that showcases his beautiful guitar playing on such songs as “Cannonball Rag,” “A Whiter Shade of Pale” and “God Only Knows.”
Let’s hope he enjoys the August festival appearance so much that he organizes a real tour.
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